In the early 1450s, an aging blacksmith returned to his family home in the small German city of Mainz. Building on the advances of earlier mechanics, the merchant leveraged his family connections, and finally secured financing to construct his life’s ambition. Shortly thereafter, his invention set loose the Reformation. Johannes Gutenberg had finally succeeded in bringing his printing press to life.
At the dawn of the Renaissance, Gutenberg introduced an incredibly useful toot o humanity. But the Bible was one of only a handful of books that really needed publishing. Artists didn’t fully realize the medium for another couple of centuries. Miguel Cervantes published the first modern novel, Don Quixote, in 1603, more than 150 years after Gutenberg achieved first mover status. Shakespeare’s friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, only published the First Folio in 1623.
Similarly, in July 2003, a former radio host and Harvard academic, aired the very first podcast. Christopher Lyddon successfully used an RSS feed to publish an an interview with his colleague, Dave Winer. That first podcast lead to a regular show, Open Source, which is still in production today.
Most podcast fans have never heard of Christopher Lyddon or Dave Winer. They do know industry leaders like Roman Mars and Ira Glass, who host the popular shows 99% Invisible and This American Life. Andy Bowers, the empresario of Slate’s lucrative podcast empire, Panoply, believes that podcasting has entered its golden age. It took Cervantes and Shakespeare a sesquicentennial to fully realize the dream of the movable type printing press. According to Bowers, podcasts achieved that promise in just over a decade.
I think Bowers is probably wrong about the onset of the golden age. Like Dickens, Melville, and Tolstoy, the greatest podcasters are probably yet to come.
In October 2014, however, podcasting did become mainstream. Our cultural fixation on criminal procedurals and binge consumption came to a head as radio producer Sarah Koening unspooled the details of a 1999 murder in Serial. The spectacle surrounding the show drew more attention than the actual details of the story. Koening achieved celebrity status and guest-starred on the Colbert Report. CBS News had to explain the medium itself before explaining the uproar.
The success of Serial marked an important milestone in the history of podcasting. Like many writers have documented, the show arrived just as a number of economic and technological developments coalesced, allowing podcasts to explode. Millenials have smartphones in their pockets, are constantly on the move, and don’t watch television. With an eager audience, advertisers are starting to pay for airtime, and media outlets are getting in on the branding. These trends aligned just as Koening brought to podcasting a trope that has succeeded for years in print and and on video.
Before Serial, though, the iTunes podcast catalog felt like a Mainz library in the 1450s. The technology provided exciting opportunities but not much content. Today, the wealth of podcasts is staggering with promising new shows coming online everyday. Entire new genres are just starting to be explored.
Fictional podcasts are criminally underserved with Welcome to Nightvale providing a welcome blueprint inspiration. RadioLab and 99% Invisible demonstrate what creative sounds and thoughtful editing can bring to storytelling. Paul F. Tomkins shows how podcasts can showcase outstanding comedic talents in a variety of formats. And soon, Serial will try to live up to its promise of nonfiction narrative journalism in its second season.
Despite the surplus of new podcasts, there is no table of contents. For movies, we have Rotten Tomatoes and the Hollywood Reporter. For television, we rely on Emily Nussbaum and Richard Lawson. Where do we go if we want to find the best garage-bound comedians or artful personal stories?
El Cynosure seeks to provide that answer. This site will be the first word on the critical and economic developments in podcasting. We’ll provide reviews and promote our favorites as unabashed supporters of the realm. We’ll also seek to cover the latest trends in the industry, from public radio developments to legal battles. That doesn’t mean we won’t also criticize bad actors. We’re here to steer listeners away from ill conceived (The Daily Show Without Jon Stewart) or ill produced (Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin) shows when they could be spending their time with artful gems like The Allusionist or Ask Roulette.
By the time Guttenberg got around to publishing his Bible in the 1450s, the critical consensus behind the book was largely settled. Shakespeare, though, had to put up with naysayers like Robert Greene who called him an upstart crow. Hopefully here at El Cynosure, we’ll stick to more positive criticism. But like Greene, Heminge, and Condell, we’ll hope to advance the medium of podcasting beyond its early years and into the age of truly outstanding audio entertainment that leaves audiences feeling like the grace of God is with them.